Psalm 22

Anyone seen the news lately?

·        Flooding in Saudi Arabia (killed 10)

·        Protests in Egypt

·        Continued instability in Haiti

·        Continued conflict in Sudan

·        There were shootings in Arizona and shootings in LA

·        The economy, though “recovering”, is far from strong again, unemployment remains at 9.5% as the country’s average.

And if that weren’t enough…

·        There are problems in marriages

·        Trials in dating

·        Too much debt

·        Days of endless depression

·        Aching bones

·        Domestic Violence

·        Sexual abuse

·        Child abuse

·        Diminished retirement income for those who cannot return to work

·        We have yet to find a cure for cancer and hear of new diagnoses each week.

·        Nearly 45 years of conflict in Israel Palestine

·        Over 25 million dead from AIDS with nearly 33 million currently infected with AIDS/HIV

In other words, you look around the world, and it all seems a bit depressing these days.  We can see the world ripe with problems that seem to go on forever and we’re bound to ask, “Where is God in all of this?”   

Sometimes we need to cry out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken us?  Don’t you care?  Can’t you hear our prayers?  Why are we still waiting for answers? 

Don’t we all have some kind of “why” question? 

Somehow, within our modern Christian faith it seems to have become taboo to question God or cry out, “Where are you? Why have you left me in the desert alone?” But it’s not taboo.  It’s not unfaithful to cry out for God.  In fact, crying out for God to help us, to answer us, is one of the most faithful things we can do.  We’re searching for God after all.

It’s scriptural even.  The Psalm wasn’t just one person’s lament.  It’s written by an individual, but the psalms became corporate prayers.  They became the laments or the praises of the people.  Psalm 22 became a lament of the people.  And not just a lament you looked up in your printed Bible from time to time when you needed it.  Bibles weren’t printed.  Heck, Bibles weren’t even compiled at that point. Instead, the Psalms were memorized.  Each person learned them and knew them by heart.  They could call these prayers to mind at any time. So, when an Israelite felt the need to lament and cry out, the words were there on the tip of their tongue: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?!” The people memorized this prayer just like they memorized the next “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…”  It wasn’t taboo. It wasn’t unfaithful. Each of the Psalms, in the fullness of their meaning, was a prayer to God.  And each Psalm addressed a different part of life…sometimes praise, sometimes begrudging an enemy, and sometimes, a desperate cry for help.

There is no perfect walk with God where we are unscathed by the problems of the world.  We can’t hide in a hole like a hermit hoping we can avoid the horrible things that happen around us.  Sin is real. Tragedy is real. Terror is real. Sickness is real. Death is real.  They are all unavoidable realities for us.  So, why do we try and pretend like they shouldn’t?  Of course, we wish they didn’t happen.  And the hope we have is that in the Kingdom of God, all these horrible realities will be but a vague memory. But we aren’t there yet.  We’re here. We’re in this broken place full of crazy sinful people—US!

And the truth of the matter is sometimes things are grim. So let’s not gloss over it. Let’s call it like it is.  Let’s sit in the middle of the mire for a moment and have a little talk with God.  It’s not about a pity party. It’s not about drawing on our whining and complaining for days on end.  It is about expressing ourselves honestly and frankly with God.  Let’s put our hearts on the table and say,

“Do you care anymore?”

“Are you deaf?”

“Can’t you see it’s getting pretty bad around here?”

God can hear that from us, and we’re not going to get smited for it.  I’m not trying to bring everybody down, and I don’t think the psalmist was either.  It’s not that there aren’t wonderful things happening around us that are worth celebrating. But we try and hurry through the painful stuff.  We don’t even want to slow down long enough to see what is happening, which is understandable, but not realistic.  Cancer doesn’t cure in a day.  Grief doesn’t go away in a week.  Relationships don’t fix themselves, they take sacrifice and work--sometimes more work than we want to put into them.  World peace is a simple thing to say you want at a beauty pageant, but how many people realistically could create a plan for us to get there? AIDS has been an epidemic for 30 years now.  There’s no quick fix to problems this big. We can’t fast forward through them.

So, let’s slow down a minute.  Even if it hurts to see the faces of those orphaned by AIDS. Even if our blood boils that yet another loved one is hurting, yet another marriage is failing. Let’s be present here and bear our hearts to God.